Writing at Top Speed

Well, it's day 28 and I have taken just way too many days off this month. If I'd kept up with the daily average, I'd have 45,000 words under my belt but I'm only at 38,700. Still, I was horribly behind upon waking yesterday and worked all day. So there's still hope I can catch up and make my 50,000 words by midnight Monday, or 7:00 PM EDT.

Still, things are flowing. I've left Spain finally, in my narrative, and am now enjoying a few weeks in northern Italy. It's wonderful, actually, reliving the experiences, even the bad ones.

I did take off a couple of days to have a Thanksgiving dinner of sorts. Since it's not a holiday celebrated outside the USA, none of my guests had ever been to one before. We had it on Wed, not Thu, due to other people's commitments--again, it's not a holiday here!--and did we have fun. Hardly traditional as you can't get a turkey to roast, not that my oven can roast anyway. Too much steam buildup, a problem with tiny ovens I'm told.


So we had stuffed pork tenderloin in pastry with an apple sage sauce. The pork, admittedly, got slightly charred in the toaster oven as I had no confidence in my regular oven that the pastry would brown, but none of us missed the bird and I thought it came out tasty enough for an experiment. Or maybe it was the pomegranate Champagne cocktails that took the sting out of it. Or the surprise chocolate birthday cake for one of my guests who'd just celebrated a birthday two days earlier. Any way you slice it, it was a fun evening.

For anyone who wants to try the Champagne cocktails, chill 5 ounces of Cointreau or Grand Marnier with 5 ounces of pomegranate juice and 1 ounce of fresh lime juice. Pour into Champagne flutes about 1/4 to 1/3 full and top with sparkling wine or Champagne. Makes 8 yummy drinks.

I hope everyone who celebrates the holiday had a lovely one. But now it's off to cram in some more writing if I'm to make my Monday deadline. No wonder the characters have worn off my keyboard....